


Absolute Freedom and Terror

by SoyCaptain



Category: Persona 5
Genre: 2/2, Angst, Drabble, Grief/Mourning, Hegelian Dialectic but Make It Sad, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Persona 5: The Royal, Persona 5: The Royal Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:07:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24278581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoyCaptain/pseuds/SoyCaptain
Summary: “They’ve always been a duality and the way every wave of pleasure is accompanied by the imminent pain of separation is proof. They way they fit inside each other, how the curve of his cheek matches the slope of his neck with such striking precision.”A 2/2 elegiac drabble.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 5
Kudos: 140





	Absolute Freedom and Terror

**Author's Note:**

> i’m coping. 
> 
> i’m embarrassed but the title is the title of a chapter from GWF Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. yeah, i know. i’m sorry. 
> 
> big thank you to Becca (@SadMoreLikeRad on twitter) for beta-ing!

Anticipation is sexual anxiety. It’s all anxiety. It’s all everything. And soon nothing. And a sweet dream that fades in the morning light. Of course it had to be this way—neither of them believed they deserved stability. They’re both doomed to temporaries. They’re ephemeral, this thing they have exists in sunsets and autumn leaves. In undriven snow. In a youth for those who were never young.

He’s warm. He’s so _goddamn_ warm. Maybe it’s the chill of the room and the heat of the moment, but he’s being swallowed by it. He’d live there if he could, but that’s where the beauty lies—in the way it’ll never be the same. In the way he’ll never be the same. In the way the other man irreparably changes him from the inside out. How he unfolds on top of him.

It’s so perfect and miserable.

They’ve always been a duality and the way every wave of pleasure is accompanied by the imminent pain of separation is proof. They way they fit inside each other, how the curve of his cheek matches the slope of his neck with such striking precision.

He remembers in school he had to read an old story regarding the creation of humans. Existing as duplicity until forcibly separated. Doomed to plead for reintegration for their hubris. Ren believes the story now. He watches folklore animate before him with the way Akechi’s hand fits into his like it was made to be there.

And the way his body aches with the possibility of separation.

It’s supposed to be clumsy, but it plays out like a choreographed fight scene. The fumbling is deliberate, it’s performative in a subconscious sense. Ren decides he hasn’t felt alive until he feels Akechi inside him and the way their hips slot together like the last piece of a frustratingly tedious puzzle. He’ll be whole, at least for the night. He’ll feel beauty and love and fullness in their fleeting moments together. He’ll feel like a real person. He'll be actualized in the intensity in Akechi’s eyes and the way he sees him, truly sees him, before he becomes invisible again. Before he fractures and falls apart more than he ever could before Goro Akechi was thrust into his life.

“I love you,” Ren breathes into the space between them. It’s more like a sigh of relief. He’s finally able to spit out the blood that’s been pooling and festering in his mouth for months. But Akechi chokes on it, grunting and screwing his eyes shut as his body tenses like he’s bracing for impact. His arms shake but his rhythm doesn’t falter. His dedication to their joining is a satisfying response for Ren as he wraps his arms around Akechi’s torso, mashing the skin of their chests, unable to delineate where Self ends and Other begins. He doesn’t want to delineate. He wants to be whole.

It’s good. Too good for him. More than he ever deserved. And the dread floods his abdomen before they even finish because of course they’re constantly tormented by inevitability. Ren clings tighter, afraid that Akechi will be gone as soon as he lets go, that he’ll fall through his fingers like ash and he’ll be alone again. It’s hard to breathe with his face pressed against the other’s neck but he lets Akechi breathe for him. Even as his breaths become ragged and labored with staccato notes that crescendo to sobs. Even as Ren mirrors them as he mirrors everything in Akechi until his neck is slick from humid tears.

Pulling his face away, he gasps for air like he’s been resuscitated and the tears on his face cool instantly into glacial streams. His whole body is tectonic and the other moves within him, unrelenting despite the way his own body trembles and his diaphragm contracts against Ren’s own. With care and grace, Ren slides his arm down so his hand can cradle Akechi’s face—to use as leverage to press his forehead to the other’s. His hair clings to his face where sweat and tears collide and Ren uses his thumb to brush it back. Noses touch, breaths mingle, tears meet.

It’s so much better than either of them deserve. It’s so much sweeter than either could have imagined. A confounding tenderness.

“I love you, Goro,” Ren whispers again, the desperation in his voice conspicuous. It wavers in tandem with the contractions in his torso. God, it’s really going to be over. He can’t afford regrets. There’s no turning back.

“I love you so much. I wanted you to—“ Ren begins again but is interrupted by the wavering gasp lodged in his throat as Akechi touches parts inside of him he never imagined possible. He gains enough composure on the backstroke to continue. “I wanted. I didn’t want you to, to go without knowing. That. That someone loves you so much. And wants—Ah.”

Like all things they find themselves involved in, it’s complicated. It’s a mess. It’s a whirlpool of arousal and mourning, of anger and wistfulness. Of desperation. Of divinity in the flesh. Akechi doesn’t respond to Ren’s haphazard, lust-addled confession. He can’t afford to think about it; he’s a master at self-deception. Still, he readjusts himself until Ren is flush with the mattress again. There’s a moment of respite from the conjuring in their guts as they meet eyes. Gunmetal and wine. He slides both of their hands until their fingers interlace, relishing in the intimacy of the act and the smile it draws from Ren’s lips before he presses them with his own.

It’s not long after that they reach the summit. The climax of their story. The summation of all the time spent together. All the conversations. The cups of coffee. The games of chess. The heartache. It’s culminating in a final shared moment of bliss. A dissolution and a synthesis. Moans, gasps, and sobs pepper the moment and escape through the seams in their gnashing lips and teeth. What was supposed to culminate in death months ago has since culminated in a profound love Ren’s certain he will be haunted by for the rest of his life.

_Aufheben_.

And then it’s quiet. There’s breathing and heart clamber in their ears but it only accentuates the silence. It’s still, like the aftermath of a tsunami, but it’s a malcontent quiet destruction and lingering death. Akechi begins the dirge as he disconnects them and Ren has never felt emptier. He’s the same vacant cage of bones, but _always empty_ and _once full_ is an important distinction he never thought he’d need to make.

“I’m sorry.” Akechi pierces the post-coital dread miasma. It’s a rasped, pathetic sound that should be eerie within the low-light ambience they’re bathed in. Instead, it’s a liturgy, it’s a message in a bottle amidst a void. Suffocating static. Crippling denouement. Akechi takes a deep, shuddering breath as he prepares another—as they reach for each other’s life preserver, as they drown in everything and nothing.

“I love you too.”


End file.
